Abstract:

Walkability has been studied extensively and lately, the interest towards it as a research topic has even increased. However, the user experience of walking and the subjective perceptions of pedestrians have been left for less attention. By involving the actual end users of the walking environment and capturing their local knowledge, this study has researched how walkability can be evaluated based on pedestrian experience.

This research was conducted as a case study of the Otaniemi campus (Espoo, Finland) following the softGIS methodology in order to gain exploratory understanding of the phenomenon of walkability based on pedestrian experience. A model of affordances in utility walking was theoretically constructed and later used as the basis for the walkability evaluation criterion to be filled by the actual pedestrians of the area. The data was collected with an online questionnaire and analyzed by using several methods. According to the results, the case area Otaniemi is generally a very walkable environment based on pedestrian experience and the whole area is widely utilized for utility walking purposes. According to the analysis, the pedestrian's habit strength in utility walking is not a significant predictor of how the walking environment is evaluated.

The research process has thus revealed that in evaluating walkability based on pedestrian experience, there are both subjective and more objective factors that influence the utility walking experience. The walking environment offers the pedestrian affordances to be perceived and actualized through five main categories: safety, functional characteristics, aesthetics, comfort and convenience, and social characteristics. In a holistic evaluation of walkability based on pedestrian experience, all these categories should be taken into account. The research has also demonstrated that the personal history of the pedestrians in the sense of habit strength in utility walking does not have to be especially considered in evaluating walkability.Käveltävyyttä on tutkittu laajasti ja kiinnostus sen tutkimiseen kasvaa edelleen. Kävelemisen nk. käyttäjäkokemus ja jalankulkijoiden subjektiiviset kokemukset kävely- ympäristöstä on kuitenkin jätetty alan tutkimuksessa vähemmälle huomiolle. Tämän tutkimuksen tavoitteena on korostaa kävely-ympäristön loppukäyttäjien hiljaisen tiedon merkitystä ympäristön arvioinnissa: tutkimuksen keskiössä se, miten käveltävyyttä voidaan arvioida kävijäkokemukseen perustuen.